chicks – My tiny u.p. farm

Mid summer garden updates 2025

August 3, 2025Jen PowellLeave a comment

The garden is really doing well. Here are some updated pictures:

Here is the main garden. Everything is doing well. I’ve replaced a couple of things (picked all my rat tail radishes, added in a tomato plant, things like that).

I’m getting some garlic scapes now. I grew spring garlic (planted this spring after cold stratifying it in the fridge for a month or two). When I grow fall garlic, the scapes are usually here in June if I’m remembering correctly. This garlic is giving me scapes now, in early August. I’m figuring bulbs will be ready later as well since it was planted later.

I had a large harvest of rat tail radishes – they are seed pods from a radish variety that doesn’t actually produce a large root. Those are now out, and that will give my green beans some room to grow.

I’m starting to get small tomatoes forming on my plants. I’ve also taken cuttings – I took the suckers out of the plant and put them in water. The cuttings formed roots and I’ve put them into my beds as well, to see if we can get some later tomatoes. I figured it’s worth a try. I also am starting to get some delicata squash on my squash plants. I didn’t know how they’d do in the raised bed situation but it seems to be growing pretty well.

I’ve got some flowers blooming now, these are zinnias. My plan was for a bunch of different colors all over the garden – I put in some black and red petunias that I bought, and a fluffy red flower (I can’t remember the name). Of the seed-grown flowers, so far I’ve just gotten these yellow zinnias and some yellow calendula.

Outside the main garden, I have some areas of flowers – a mix of native stuff and some things I planted. I was looking around the yard the other day and found that my goldenrod/comfrey/mugwort bed area had a lot of bee activity. Some of them were sleeping on the flowers (it was pretty early yet).

Black currants. I just harvested a bunch of these y/esterday and made some syrup. It was good on pancakes. It was pretty tart, so I needed to add a bunch of sugar. I have only had these canned before, this was the first harvest of a usable amount I’ve gotten.

A view of our back yard, toward the cottage garden. I mostly have perennials in there now, it gets overrun with Valerian and nettles. The white topped flowers in the picture above are the Valerian. I pick the nettles to keep them somewhat contained but they like to spread a lot – I pick the small ones when I find them and put them in soup. The valerian is everywhere but it smells so nice that I don’t really mind. I put a peach tree in the cottage garden this spring and moved my elderberry trees into there a month ago (those were in the front and not very happy – bad rocky soil). I was growing some herbs and stuff in there but perennials work better for me in there – I can mostly just let them do their thing. I leave it a bit wild but it looks nice. The cats like to hang out in there and sunbathe.

The chickens are growing well. I set up a table and chairs next to their coop and like to hang out with them a bit. My cats sit around their coop as well – I do think they may be more interested in the tasty birds inside than being friendly. The chickens don’t seem to mind the cats, since they can’t get to them. I have come out and found a deer investigating them a few times. The chickens didn’t seem worried about the deer.

Summer is in full swing.

Farm updates Mid July 2025

July 15, 2025Jen PowellLeave a comment

The garden is growing, and the chickens are getting larger too. We put the chickens into their new home on July 4th. Here you can see they were almost outgrowing their box, and pics of their first day in the coop.

They are really enjoying their coop. They chase each other around, and we’ve put watermelon in for them on hot days and they love that as a treat.

The garden is growing as well. It went from this in early July:

To this yesterday:

I am realizing as the plants have grown in that I kind of overcrowded things a little. I think it is looking really nice though, and some space should be recovered as I harvest things. Nothing seems like its growth is hindered. I have had deer jumping over my fence and munching on some stuff though so I put some strategically-placed sticks and pieces of fence in the beds to try to deter them. I may have to work harder in the future to fix that issue but there is so much outside of my garden they can eat that I hope my current efforts are enough.

I’m starting to get some harvest now, my chard is getting big enough to pick and I’ll have rat tail radishes soon:

Here you can see the pods growing. I grew these radishes a couple of years ago, and they were tasty. I cooked them like green beans, just sauteed them. It’s a radish plant that gets edible pods up on top instead of the big root down below. I have green beans growing in the same bed, so once these produce I’ll pull them out, let the bean plants get a little bigger, and maybe plant another crop of one of them where these were.

The garden is doing great and it’s very exciting.

A new group of friends for the farm

June 18, 2025June 18, 2025Jen PowellLeave a comment

We got new chickens! If you are a longtime follower of the blog, or have read my old posts, you know that I had chickens for about 5 years, until spring of 2020. We really enjoyed them, but it had gotten too much to take care of them in the wintertime, and was very expensive at the time with all our birds. I think we had 20 chickens or so, plus some ducks when we gave our birds to the neighbor. It’s been a few years now and I missed having them. Then this spring with the price of eggs and everything going on I decided to get some, but only a few. I ordered 6 female chicks. They arrived at the beginning of June. They are just over 2 weeks old now. Here are some pictures of my hens.

We ordered 6 from a mail-order place: 2 easter eggers, 2 fibro-easter eggers (full black chickens), and 2 black/blue splash chickens. When they arrived, one had died in transit, and then one died the next day. The chicken company refunded me for those two, and I went and picked up 2 more hens at Tractor supply, some Buff Orpingtons. I wanted to make sure everyone was the same age, and not have to introduce anyone later. I’m not sure what kind of chicken everyone above is, except the 2 yellow ones are my Buff Orpingtons. We’ll have to wait and see how everyone feathers out to know what is what.

My old coop from before was a converted old sauna building, that is now kind of falling apart and is mostly just used for storage. I decided not to use that and ordered a small coop for my hens. It came as prefabricated parts that we then assembled. I think it will be nice for my hens once they are ready to go outside. The coop came with a small run, and it’s light enough that we plan to move it to our front porch for winter time. That will make it easier for us to take care of them in the winter, and keep them out of some of the snow. Here is our coop:

I also have some predator proofing stuff to add to the bottom to keep creatures from digging underneath – we haven’t added that yet. We just set it up and added some waterproofing. I used to let my chickens free range all over our property, but that got annoying – I had to fence in all my plants everywhere because the chickens used flower beds as dust baths. If I feel that they need more room to roam I may add some temporary movable fencing around the coop and run, so I can give them a little more foraging space.

I’m excited for our new little flock. They are all healthy and doing well. I have another month or so before they are ready for the outdoor coop, but I think they will really like it.

Poultry in Summertime

July 23, 2019July 21, 2019Jen PowellLeave a comment

Our chickens and ducks have been enjoying this summer. We let them free range when we are home, and they love to wander around our yard, looking for yummy things to eat. We currently have 4 ducks and 29 chickens (14 adults, 15 chicks/almost adults). Here are some updated pictures of the flock:

older ducks — Here are our older lady ducks. These two and the new ducks still hang out in two pairs, mostly. We can tell them apart because these ladies have dark-stained bills, the newbies have orange bills.

newbie ducks — Here are the new ducks, they were running away when I tried to take their picture. Another way to tell the pairs apart is that the male (in back, here) quacks softly, all the time. So you always know where he is in the yard.

Here is Esky (short for Escape Artist). She is one of our oldest hens, and the only one who lays white eggs.

esky daughter — Here is Esky’s daughter – she has the same comb as her mom, and was born the next year (so is about 3 years old)

brahmas — Here are our two Buff Brahmas, they were enjoying a dust bath. They along with Esky make up our 4 year old hens.

bertram — Here is our older (2 years old?) rooster Bertram, patrolling the yard.

food — Here are a bunch of chickens coming for treats. The black hen at the front is an older lady, and most of the rest are chicks from this year. You can see some of the coloring now – some of the chicks have really amazing feather patterns.

orloff son — I believe this is a young rooster, and he looks like a young Bertram.

Here are more chicks – they are all different – some light, some bright orange, some black and gray. We have a lot of muff-necked chickens now.

red and brown — Here is one of the really cool looking ones – orange and black with a muff neck.

white roo — Here is one of our young roosters. If you look back at our chick pics, this one was the one with little cat-eye eyeliner. He likes to come out of the coop each morning and crow before Bertram does. Bertram doesn’t seem to mind just yet.

buff hen — Here is a Buff-Orpington looking hen (she seems docile like a hen, anyway) as well as the back of our older Brahma’s head.

The Farm in early July

July 12, 2019Jen PowellLeave a comment

This summer’s garden is going well. We have had a weirdly dry year, compared to the last few. I have had to water things to make sure my seeds sprout. (I’ve had seeds drown and wash away in previous years). Everything seems to be growing pretty well though. The chickens and ducks are doing well too, and seem to be happy with the summer weather. Here is a photo tour of our little farm:

The roses are blooming. My parents planted these many years ago.

roses 2 — Here is a better view of the roses.

peonies — Peonies. These smell really nice.

Here is the columbine I found in the roadside ditch last year and transplanted to my front flower bed. It grew back this summer and bloomed, so it must like its new spot.

bleeding hearts — Bleeding hearts (this photo is catching the end of the bloom for this year).

Some of my older hens hanging out near the shady side of the house.

bright chick — This is one of the chicks. Possibly a hen, we are just starting to figure out who is what. We have at least three young roosters, based on them crowing. We’ll have to decide what to do with them later this year.

comfrey — My Comfrey is doing well. I put in 3 plants a few years ago and they keep coming back and spreading a bit. They are pretty and the bees like them.

Some of our strawberry harvest! My patch did really well this year, I got at least 6 cups of strawberries.

potatoes and squash — Here is a side view of my back garden – the potatoes are on the left, summer squash on the right in the middle of this picture. Strawberry patch is behind the summer squash.

cauliflower and brussels — My cauliflower and Brussels sprouts, and lettuce on the right.

butternut — Butternut squash plants. I put in a fence trellis for them to climb – the trellis is resting on the main outside fence of the garden, with enough room for us to go in and grab fruit if it ends up hanging under the trellis.

The garlic are doing really well. I harvested some scapes the other day.

Here are some of our corn. I have two patches, two different kinds – these are a Golden Bantam variety.

peanuts — Peanuts! These are growing well, as far as I can see. Our summer has become hot and humid lately, and they seem to like that.

Here is a picture of the right side of the main garden – the other corn patch is in the background. Then coming forward there are peanuts, peppers/green onions, and cucumbers/shallots.

tomato fencing — Here you can see my tomato trellises. I set it up right this year (instead of using sticks like last year). I just used welded wire fence sections, and pounded some stakes in and attached the fence with wire. I tied the tomatoes up after I took this pic – most of my tomatoes are determinate varieties but they still get pretty big, and droopy when the fruit comes in. Some are indeterminate though. They are starting to get flowers now. I can’t wait for tomatoes!

A grape vine my uncle gave me last year. I had it in a pot until late fall and I realized “oh, I’d better get that in the ground before it snows.” – I put it in not knowing if it would come back, but it did. It’s in a good spot too, right at the fence at the northern side of the main garden, so it can grow there and not be in the way.

Here is my tallest sunflower so far – it’s about 3.5 feet tall currently. I have 14 or 15 sunflowers coming up that I’ve found so far. I planted several seeds, but I have some rogues coming up as well.

More Ducks!

June 18, 2019June 18, 2019Jen PowellLeave a comment

My ducks have been seeming to want male attention. They keep bugging my rooster; they will bob their heads and quack while surrounding him. He has not seemed interested at all, so I figured I should try to find an adult male duck to add to the flock. I put an ad out on Craigslist, and was contacted by someone who needed a home for his pair of Pekins – a male and a female. So we now have two more ducks. Pictures are below of the ducks together, and some updated chick pics:

012 — The orange-billed ducks in the middle here are the newbies, they are about a year old.

006 — My older girls have the darker bills – they are about 3.

007 — Everyone has been getting along well. Yesterday they went in their pool, taking turns – the new ducks went in first, swam a bit, and then the older ladies went and took their turn – the pool only fits two of them at a time. But I thought it was cute that they are taking turns.

017 — Here they were hanging out their first full day here. We got them over the weekend.

014 — The chickens were hanging around them as well.

018 — Here are the chicks – they are getting very big. They are about half the size of the adults now.

021 — You can see Atat in the background – the chicks were investigating him a little. (The dogs are separated from the chickens by a fence).

008 — Here they are hanging out on some boards at the edge of the woods.

010 — Another picture of them in the woods.

009 — This orange one (I believe a Buff Orpington, but they are all mixes of breeds).

Everyone is doing well. We did have an unfortunate event happen with the chicks. I typically count everyone when I put them to bed. We put everyone away on Friday night and found that one chick was missing. We counted and re-counted several times, and looked all over. They usually hang out together. I figured if someone was stuck somewhere they would have been chirping – they are not quiet at all when they are unhappy. We think something, possibly a hawk, came in and got one. There is no sign of that chick. So now we have 16 chicks. In my 5 years of owning chickens, this is the first time that I’ve lost any to a predator, so we’ve been pretty lucky.

Chick and Garden Updates, mid May 2019

May 13, 2019May 13, 2019Jen PowellLeave a comment

Our spring finally seems to be in full swing – we kept getting unseasonably cold weather for a bit – they were calling for 6 inches of snow last week but we didn’t get any, luckily. The temperatures are starting to warm enough that I put in a bunch of the garden this past weekend (the stuff that can tolerate frost, anyway). I heard the frogs chirping the last few evenings – it’s finally been warm enough for them.

The chicks are growing up really fast. I gave them a larger box from their original brooder box. I think I have mostly females but there are at least a couple of roosters in there – someone has been attempting to crow, but it’s not very developed yet. Below are some new pictures of the chicks and the rest of the farm:

two weeks old — Here are the chicks today – they are just over 2 weeks old now.

Here is one of the penguin-looking chicks. I’m hoping it’s a girl but with that comb it doesn’t look promising. I do have some adult hens with large combs, so we’ll have to wait to find out.

A couple of brown/red chicks. They were not happy that I had moved them, they were ducking down a little scared.

yellow — Here is one of the blonde chicks.

yellow two — Here are two of our blonde chicks – the one with the orange head is on the left, the one with the cat-eye-eyeliner is on the right. (From individual pics in the last post)

yellow 3 — Here is another pic – you can see the wing feather coloration change on the right. It’s cool when their feathers come in – chicks’ coloring can completely change as they grow.

potato bags — We are growing potatoes in feed bags again this year – we have 20 bags planted – I put in about 11.5 pounds of potatoes, three different types. We had really good luck last year growing them in bags. They are in the garden fence to keep them from the chickens.

Here is my back garden that I took from the chicken coop – last year we grew squash and tomatoes here but it doesn’t get enough sun later in the season. I am putting a lot of shade tolerant things in here, lettuce, peas, and other things. I planted everything yesterday that can go in already. Peas, spinach, Brussel sprouts, cauliflower, lettuce, chard, kale, and brocollini. I have some other stuff started inside, and I will direct sow beans in June.

garden preseason — Here is my garden as of today. There are only a couple of beds ready – this is the double-dug French Intensive garden. I have 12 beds in here, but the weeds are trying to take over. Most of this garden will go in next month, so I have some time to get the beds weeded and ready.

Here are some purple flowers we have growing in our yard. I’m not sure what these are called.

Double the Trouble

April 28, 2019Jen PowellLeave a comment

We have doubled our flock (plus one) – We already had 16 adults, and we just hatched 18 chicks – we sadly lost one chick today so we are at 17. We had about a 69% hatch rate (from 26 after candling). All the chicks remaining are healthy and alert, and running around in their box. Here are some pictures of our new additions:

chicks 2 — The chicks in their brooder box.

A few years ago I did individual chick pictures – at a day or two, then progression pics as they aged. I was thinking I would do that this time, but then I went to do photos and realized that may be too difficult – it’s hard to tell everyone apart and there are just too many. I decided to do groups of colors instead, with a few individual pics of chicks with distinctive markings. See below:

Here are the blondes and strawberry blondes. I think some chicks may have some buff Orpington in them – otherwise no idea.

tiny penguins — Here are the penguins: The black / gray / really dark brown chicks. Most of these are black with white (hence penguins) but there is one that is a light blondie-gray – maybe they’ll have some kind of splash / blue coloring when they mature – we’ll have to wait and find out.

brunettes — Here are the reds and browns. There are some partridge Chanteclers and possibly Russian Orloff mixed ones.

This little chick has a brown mark on her head and a bit of cat-eye eyeliner. And 5 toes.

orange head — This blondie has orange on her head.

new hairy — Here is one of the gray ones – this is the only feathered leg chick we have.

grey — Here is the blue / splash colored chick – I had a splash once that was yellow with dingy gray – this is gray with dingy yellow – so we’ll see how this one turns out.

It’s very exciting. I hope they are mostly girls, but we’ll have to wait to find out.

Early Arrivals

April 25, 2019Jen PowellLeave a comment

I have eggs in the incubator, due to hatch this Saturday. I started with 32 eggs; when I candled at 10 days I took six eggs out, leaving 26 in the incubator. Last night I went to take them out of the automatic egg turner, because you are supposed to remove that about 3 days before hatching, so that the chicks can orient themselves for hatching, and because the turner could hurt them if they hatched in it.

incubator eggs — Here they are after taking them out of the automatic turner. I tried to put them in groups based on where the eggs came from. They are marked as well so I can keep track of which eggs hatched.

As I was moving the eggs, I heard “Cheep Cheep!” I thought that was a little early, but I was excited to hear that at least someone was on their way.

This morning, I heard a really loud peep from the next room, and went to check. I found a chick had hatched! On day 19! Here is a really bad picture (the flash went off and shined on the top of the incubator):

new hatchee — Here was the chick that I found this morning

I’ve never had chicks hatch early – I’ve only hatched chicks a few times, and it’s been awhile, but I didn’t realize they could come that early. I came home and found that the one had brought a friend; we now have two chicks. They are both comfortable in the brooder, waiting for more friends to arrive.

redhead — Here is one that is a little red and brown. I believe this is the first one that hatched this morning.

I haven’t heard any other pips yet, but they aren’t actually due for two more days. So we’ll see what happens. I’m glad that two hatched so the chicks aren’t lonely. There are still 24 eggs in the incubator, so we should get some more soon.

Maple Syrup, and new friends on the way

April 14, 2019Jen PowellLeave a comment

We made maple syrup this year. We started collecting at the end of March, when we still had a bunch of snow. We ended our collection after a couple of weeks because we had run out of room in our freezer and fridge for gallon jugs of sap. The snow had been melting but then this last Thursday we got hit by the end of the Bomb-Cyclone storm that came up through the middle of the country – we only got 5 inches of snow here at the house though, but it made it look like winter again. Below are some pictures from before that snow hit us.

Here are some of the trees tapped this year. We only tapped three right at the edge of the yard, because there was a foot of snow around the trees when we first started. We collected sap for about 2 weeks. This picture was from right at the end of that time.

wizard — Here is our cat Wizard, venturing outside on a nice day last week.

I planned on cooking the sap outside this year. I bought a big steam-table pan (I just searched for “maple syrup pan” on amazon) that would hold 22 quarts. We have a firepit already set up that I was going to set the pan over to cook the sap on; but then the day I planned on cooking everything up, it was pouring rain. I ended up just doing it on the stove using two big canning pots. It took a full day on Sunday and then the evening Monday after work, but it is now complete.

I also have some exciting news about chickens! Last April we got Bertram, our Russian Orloff rooster, from an ad on Craigslist. I was planning on ordering some chicks this year, but then I was contacted on Facebook by the lady I got Bertram from – she found me through this blog. She asked if I was interested in trading hatching eggs, since she still has another Russian Orloff and then we both get chicks from these roosters. So we traded eggs – I saved pretty much all our eggs for a week, and gave her 1.5 dozen, and saved 11 for us. I received a dozen from her chickens, as well as nine eggs for Partridge Chanteclers that she got from another lady. So I have 32 eggs in the incubator, they started on 4/6. I’m possibly going to end up with way too many chickens, but I didn’t want to waste any of the eggs I’d saved, or the ones I had gotten either. I looked at the 3 previous hatches I did with this incubator in 2016, and we usually get about a 50% hatch rate from the original set put in – typically I candle and end up taking out about 25%, and then at the end another 25% don’t make it, so I’m figuring that is about what we’ll end up with – approximately 15 or 16. We’ll have to figure out what to do with any extra roosters, but I’ll worry about that later this summer. We do need more hens since mine are becoming slackers – the youngest of my hens are 3 years old, from our 2016 hatches. From 16 hens currently, we are getting about 5 eggs per day if we are lucky. I am excited for new chicken friends – Fingers crossed we don’t get mostly roosters.

incubator 4.6 — Here are the new chicks on the way! We have 32 eggs in here – I expect after candling we’ll have 20-25, maybe. I will candle the eggs this coming week (after 10 days in the incubator). The left 2 columns are Partridge Chanteclers, the middle two columns are mixed eggs from Bertram’s old home, and the 2 right columns are from my hens.

Our ducks are excited that it is finally spring – they’ve been searching for snow-melt puddles:

ducks in a puddle — Our ducks wandered to the puddle at the edge of our property last week – you can kind of see them in the middle of this picture here – (the houses are our neighbors behind us). This area is low and it tends to fill up in spring. The ducks love it.

ducks in woods 2 — Here they are heading back through the woods to the coop. They didn’t like that I came to take their picture.